If Barack Hussein Obama is not impeached, we need look no further than the rising power of political correctness for the reason.

Democrats understandably have no interest in even allowing a congressional debate on Obama’s crimes against the Constitution, and Republican leaders have no stomach for it. But Republican sheepishness is in truth a reflection of the deeper problem that now permeates our civic culture at all levels, national, state and local.

In days of old, which is to say, for the first 200 years of our nation’s history, citizens, lawmakers and judges alike looked to the language of the Constitution for guidance on the grounds for impeachment of public officials. No one was thought to be above the law, not even presidents, and this was universally considered one of the hallmarks of a republican form of government. Only monarchies and dictatorships have a class of people above the law, not democracies.

But that was before we entered the Obama era, the era of “a post-racial America.”

After five years of progressivism under our “transformational leader” Obama, we now know that a “post-racial America” is not a place where politics has risen above race. Rather, it is a place where a Constitution is not allowed to constrain leaders who are pursuing social justice. To accomplish “transformational change,” Obama must necessarily be above the law.

But it is not really Obama’s race that gives him this immunity and insulates him from impeachment, it is his progressivism. If anyone doubts this, they have only to consider whether a black Republican president, someone cut from the same cloth as Allen West or Clarence Thomas, would be given this same immunity.

On careful analysis, it turns out that race per se is not the critical factor in allocating this new immunity from the laws of impeachment. It is the progressive motives and goals that give certain anointed politicians immunity from criticism when things just don’t work out too well – which, as we know, happens all too often in government, particularly when your goals are grandiose.

We should not be surprised that this new, progressive “post-racial America” is not a place where Martin Luther King’s dream is realized, a place where a person is judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. Instead, we live in a place where you are judged by the content of your agenda. The more “progressive” your agenda, as defined by the lords of political correctness, the more latitude you have in pursuing it.

It’s hardly a secret that Obama has long considered himself above the law, that he would prefer to govern by executive decree and not acts of Congress, but that arrogance is not based on his race. Yes, his race is used as a weapon against critics, but it is not the source of his special status as a transformational leader above the law.

Progressives of all races are quick to play the race card against critics and especially against white liberals, who are on a perpetual guilt trip because of the sins of their ancestors. But to Obama’s progressive legions, he needs to be above the law because his mission demands it.

To progressives, the law itself and, indeed, the Constitution are presumed to be illegitimate. To Obama, Holder and Hillary Clinton, the principles of social justice can be the only compass, not laws inherited from “dead white men.” But it was not Obama’s race that taught him this, it was his ideology. As Jeremiah Wright’s black liberation theology teaches us, our laws are the product of history, and our history is one of exploitation, slavery, sexism and imperialism.

It is not news that Obama and his allies on the left believe such things; they always have believed them, as do several million college professors and social activists. What is new and dangerous is that the Republican Party leadership and large segments of our political establishment have come around to agreeing with them. It no longer matters what the Founding Fathers and authors of the Constitution believed. What matters is not offending political correctness, and progressives are the guardians – and enforcers – of those texts.

Thus, Washington’s elites of both parties are of one mind on impeachment. While the facts may suggest to ordinary folks that at a minimum, the House of Representatives should launch an impeachment investigation, political correctness dictates otherwise. Barack Obama, Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton cannot be impeached because only the forces of reaction and racism would want to do such a thing, not law-abiding citizens.

Still, ordinary folk are puzzled by reluctance in Congress to employ the constitutional remedy for lawlessness, which is impeachment. They see the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal, the flagrant disregard for the Constitution in presidential appointments without Senate confirmation, the Benghazi lies to protect the president’s re-election campaign and the newly exposed IRS war on Obama’s political enemies – the list grows each week.

To solve the puzzle, first open your eyes. When government officials are above the law and are universally acknowledged to be above the law, we cannot say that the nation is in danger of slipping into dictatorship. We are already there.

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